Blog-off: Spin the spanners and get to know your bike
Vanessa rides a KTM and Beta off-road, a Harley-Davidson on it, and says that there’s a huge benefit to knowing how to fettle your bike
Buzzing along, terrain rushing beneath your wheels and smile glued to your face, you feel unstoppable. But then it happens: The mechanical gremlin with its sadistic sense of timing and sh*t hits the fan. Sod’s Law somehow knowing that today is simply the worst timing. Why does it always go wrong when you’re having the most fun or in a rush?
But that’s it. The bike says ‘No’. If only you’d looked after it better. But what if you had the knowledge for a roadside fix? Or, better still, could have prevented it altogether with thorough maintenance? I recently sent my trials bike into a full throttle backflip over a slippery rock ascent in an Andorran trials competition in the pouring rain… Yikes! And that was it. In that moment the bike became rather sick. I was left with a nasty knocking noise well beyond my knowledge and a sweaty milelong push to get it back to the car. And, more to the point, it was the end of my fun. Just a sorry looking bike and a mind spinning like a turbo trying desperately to diagnose the issue. But I was stumped.
This is where friends come in. But why is even that such a minefield? Faced with countless absolutely adamant people who all knew with definitive, ego-driven certainty what was wrong – all enthused from their personal spannering experience – and all completely different.
“It’s the main bearing...” “Oooh, sounds like clutch plates…” “The timing chain’s out…”
Hang on a mo’ .... it’s a two-stroke... it doesn’t have a timing chain! Who the heck do I trust in this chaotic landscape of non-experts? What is it about humans that gives such confidence yet is often lacking the facts? Don’t get me wrong,
I love the help and kindness but sometimes bike nuts need to know when they don’t know, and to not just throw curve balls to confuse, making things worse. Taking the time to maintain, service and look after your own bike can make a big difference when something happens. Understanding the basics could mean the difference between limping it home or threehour wait for the recovery service. Swot up on YouTube videos and grab a good bike manual to start, and yes it will take time. There are numerous starter-level mechanics courses available, too. Time invested getting to know your bikes will be highly likely to save you considerably more time later, and you might even save some cash. Right, I’m off to the garage.